


A Bright Tomorrow

by deathwailart



Series: Ithildin [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 08:46:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Battle of the Five Armies, Tauriel seeks out Kili as the dwarves heal.</p>
<p>(AU - everyone lives/nobody dies because I have plenty of elaborate headcanon for these two I want to flesh out)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bright Tomorrow

They find each other in a tent. The battle has been won though they do not know the count of their dead yet but the company are intact and able to return home once the bodies are cleared and the rebuilding begins. The elves are the least wounded perhaps and she and Legolas have counted themselves lucky to escape with gashes already turning to red welts soon to disappear into nothing and so they are among those who help to keep watch. Orcs and goblins lie dead but there's no telling if there are some biding their time or trapped beneath mounds of bodies awaiting their chance to creep out. The tent she enters is larger than most others and she finds Thorin Oakenshield in a bed, his chest covered in bloodied bandages but it rises steadily as more dwarves sit around it, exhausted, bloodied and bruised but still with hands on their weapons, unable to leave their king. Kíli turns first with the same dark shadows beneath his eyes that he had when she healed him but the paleness of his face is only from exhaustion, not illness, his older brother peering past him too when he hears Kíli's gasp. She should leave, she knows. This is their time and she has no idea how welcome her intrusion will be but Kíli smiles at her and carefully hops up, limping only a little.  
  
"I'll just be five minutes," he murmurs quietly to Fíli who smiles and shakes his head.  
  
"Take your time, there's more than enough of us here to protect Thorin."  
  
"Cheers, you're the best brother."  
  
"Right, get going then."  
  
Kíli is only too happy to do just that, making his way out of the tent and a little bit away, muttering something about how nosy old men can be. Tauriel follows and is unable to stop herself from putting an arm around him to help take some of his weight off his leg – she knows the one she healed was still tender and that he received a knife wound to it and she wants to find him a bed (a real bed, not a table and sack of walnuts for a pillow) to make him lie down. Even left behind, Kíli's loyalty is to family and she knows he'd probably still either get up and watch over Thorin no matter what he's told to do and it's a different bond to the one she feels for her own king but then her king is not her blood in this case. Finally they find somewhere that's quiet enough with some crates for a seat that Kíli sits down on gratefully, rubbing at his leg until she tuts.  
  
"Don't, I imagine you have stitches beneath the bandages."  
  
"They itch like mad. S'like getting a load of ants down your trousers."  
  
"Is that what you wanted me to find then? Ants that would scurry out and bite my hands?"  
  
He laughs, surprised and delighted and she blushes. "I promise, no ants. I did that to my brother once when we were both little, the way he howled...still, I was very young, he forgave me."  
  
"Is this what siblings do?"  
  
"D'you not have any?" He asks – he likely knows that children among the elves are few so the question makes her smile as she shakes her head. "That's a shame, my brother's my best friend, he always looks out for me and I do the same for him."  
  
"Legolas and I are the same," she admits because there's truth in that though where she sees only a friend, she knows Legolas has, at times, seen more or the possibility of it.  
  
"Are you two..." He makes a hand gesture that's a little on the crude side and she laughs, almost falling off her on stack of crates.  
  
"No, no he feels like a brother to me."  
  
"Good!" He goes pink around the ears and it's very endearing so she reaches out to take one of his rough, callused hands in hers, remembering his feverish words and her stomach feels too light, full of butterflies. "I mean—s'good to have friends and something like a brother-"  
  
With her other hand pressed gently to the thin cut that goes from above his top lip to just below the bottom, the stitches neat but she knows he'll be left with a scar when all is said and done. "I found something that belongs to you when I," she swallows and still the tears come to her eyes when she limped across the battlefield with Legolas, finding three of Durin's line bloodied and barely breathing, two young ones crumpled by their king and uncle they were trying to protect, their breathing so shallow she thought them lost, "when I found you," she manages to finish and takes her hand from his face and into her pocket to hand him his talisman.  
  
"I thought I'd lost this," he whispers and that's when his tears come and she kneels before him, gathering him up. "I thought I would die again Tauriel, and then y-you...you were there."  
  
"Ssh, ssh." His head is tucked beneath her chin and she rubs soothing circles on his back. "Let it out, no need to hold it in any longer."  
  
She knows what it's like to have to swallow tears of grief or loss or anger when you're around company the way she has had to so often when proving herself to others among the guard and then to her king, this Silvan elf among Sindar, the looks and words from some cutting deeper than any dagger. She refused to give them any satisfaction and wept alone. Here with the day won and all of them on the mend, Kíli has been holding it all in because he's young and wants to be seen as strong and brave. She's sure he wept with his brother and uncle in the immediate aftermath but these are tears of a different kind, exhausted relief that it's over that soak her tunic and have him gasping for breath.  
  
"I'm sorry." Once he can breathe again and sit upright he wipes his face with his sleeves, taking deep shuddering breaths until he looks more himself.  
  
"I understand – tears are not a shameful thing."  
  
"I just couldn't around them. I came so close to death, we all did and it's..." He flaps his arms and she understands, smiling and daring to kiss his brow. When he looks up at her his smile is shy and she returns it, a nervous flutter in her belly.  
  
"Would you like to head back?"  
  
"Yeah, let Fíli get some sleep or see if Óin kicked most of the rest out to sleep in their own tents." She offers him a hand up and he staggers, bumping into her and it seems so natural to simply tuck some of his hair behind an ear as she helps him back, raising a hand in greeting to some of her kin still sorting through remains to separate all the dead from one another. Thick black smoke has been rising ever since it ended, far away from where the tents are stationed but she can still smell the foul stench of burning flesh.  
  
When they return to Thorin's tent, many of the dwarves have departed leaving only the old healer, Fíli and the one with the tattoos over his head. The healer nods to her then points at a chair that Kíli sheepishly drags himself over to, Fíli shooting him a questioning look before laughing quietly when his brother blushes and thankfully the other dwarf is asleep still with weapons in hand. It's when she hears a quiet murmur of _Kíli_ from the bed that she freezes, eyes wide. She should leave and says as much, nodding her head respectfully but Thorin holds up a hand and beckons her forward.  
  
"You were the one to heal my nephew of his orc wound," he begins, shifting to get comfortable with a wince, both nephews immediately moving to help him as the old dwarf mixing herbs grumbles for him to keep bloody still for once.  
  
"I am," she confirms, her hands clasped behind her back as Kíli looks between them anxiously.  
  
"I owe you a great debt for saving his life, more than once if I remember correctly?" He glances over at both nephews who nod.  
  
"In Mirkwood with the spiders, again when we were escaping, she shot down orcs to let me open the lever and-" he stops and goes bright red as Fíli smothers a laugh then picks up where his brother left off.  
  
"Then in Laketown when more orcs came for us, her and Thranduil's son but Tauriel remained to heal him. Not that he," he nudges Kíli who makes a cross, embarrassed noise, "really remembers that, he was too feverish, him and his walnuts."  
  
"Well she was glowing! How was I to know she was really there?"  
  
Thorin chuckles then coughs, rubbing his side. "Enough both of you. Tauriel then, I thank you for saving him and for keeping him safe, you have shown a great kindness I had not expected of an elf." It's hard to pick out the smile from a wince because he's moving around as if trying to get comfortable and from the activity on the other side of the tent she assumes it must be time for him to take something to ease the pain. "But...but that is the past, now we must look forward together. Rebuild together. These lads are my heirs – I am their uncle but I love them as if they were my own and to lose one would be to lose both." There's an old pain in his voice, quiet and haunted and it takes a while for her to remember that there were three heirs once and that Thorin lost a brother to orcs and war.  
  
She doesn't know what to say, flustered and oddly humbled by his words but more than that, it's the way Kíli looks at her with his big warm eyes, hopeful and young. "I would not see someone die to a morgul weapon and the agony of it, not when I could save him. These foul beasts must be hunted down, they must be stopped so they cannot harm those who are innocent."  
  
It's so bold for her to say this – she can with Legolas because they're friends and she can argue the point with Thranduil who will ignore her (although perhaps no longer, not after this) – but Thorin inclines his head and smiles.  
  
"I'm afraid I'll need _all_ of you to leave," Óin announces and Tauriel turns away to give the dwarves their privacy to say their farewells for now to Thorin, Dwalin muttering as he gets to his feet. She hears the soft murmurs from uncle to nephews and vice versa and the brothers have an arm around each other when they leave with her, Dwalin only going so far as to station himself outside.  
  
"Right, you two," he points at both young dwarves who turn and give him their best innocent looks, "rest. I mean it. Don't go off wandering with elves or to find the rest of the company or to talk to Dain's lot or anyone else. You need to rest."  
  
"So when do you rest?" Fíli asks, frowning.  
  
"When I'm dead," Dwalin retorts swiftly and with enough of a growl that everyone takes the hint and backs off.  
  
"Well, he's going to be insufferable until Thorin's back on his feet and shouting at him," Kíli says and Fíli laughs.  
  
"Maybe we can get Bilbo to sneak in and promise to guard him, you know what's worse than any other sort of Dwalin?" Tauriel doesn't realise that she's actually being asked until both of them are staring at her so she only shakes her head mutely.  
  
"Dwalin when he hasn't slept," Kíli begins.  
  
"He's worse than a bear crossed with a warg," Fíli adds with a sage nod.  
  
This time, the three of them laugh as she finds herself following them to their small tent where she stops and wonders what happens now.  
  
"I wanted to say thanks again too for saving this reckless lump, and me and Thorin too," Fíli says to her, "I hope to repay it someday."  
  
"There is no need, it is as I told your uncle."  
  
"Still, no small task dealing with him, let me tell you."  
  
"Oi!" Kíli aims a swat at his brother. "Go away before you embarrass me even more, you're the worst."  
  
"Thought I was the best not a half hour ago?"  
  
"Go away Fí," Kíli sing-songs and with a slight bow and laugh, he ducks inside the tent to leave Tauriel and Kíli alone. "So... _I_ would like to thank you. Properly." It's the wink and the way he raises his eyebrows that conveys his meaning and she almost chokes. "If you'd like that, I mean, and y'know, obviously not right now because my leg and my face and my brother in the same tent."  
  
"I would more than like that." She bends at the waist to cup his chin in her hands, the feel of stubble against her fingertips still so foreign. "I share a tent with Legolas but I am sure he wouldn't begrudge me some time to myself. When you are well."  
  
Kíli stretches up on his tiptoes and the angle is so strange, so awkward and she jumps at first when the stubble is against her face but she recovers and kisses him gently, mindful of his stitches.  
  
"Oh I want to do that a hundred times," he says when they break apart.  
  
"A hundred times and more," she confirms and he's smiles so widely that he yelps and presses a hand to his stitches before snorting with laughter. "But again, when you are well. Now go and rest, you'll heal faster if you sleep."  
  
"Don't have to tell me twice."  
  
She turns to leave but looks back over her shoulder and he's still there at the entrance of the tent, watching her go. "Kíli?" She calls before she loses her nerve even if this is reckless and by the Valar, maybe he was telling the truth about curses on talismans because some of his nature is rubbing off on her but she wouldn't change it for the world. "The answer was yes."  
  
She hurries away but chances one last look back right at the moment her meaning sinks in and the only word she can think of to describe his smile is besotted and, when she reaches her shared tent with Legolas and he raises an eyebrow in confusion, she realises she must look very much the same.  
  
"Perhaps one day," she says rather archly as she begins to remove her weapons so she can rest briefly herself, "you will understand."  
  
She pretends not to hear the snort, washing her face and hands and stripping out of her tunic to curl beneath her finely woven blankets, still smiling and with the intention of finding something that might help to heal Kíli just that little bit sooner.


End file.
